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Larry and I were going to spend a weekend with friends in Pasadena, and when they had to cancel, we decided to make it into a road trip. He drove down on Thursday and I flew to meet him Friday afternoon. We had dinner at El Chavo, a place that we frequented with Ken. The Margaritas are still pretty good, but with a change of ownership the place became more trendy and not as much our cup of tea. We scrolled through Old Pasadena on Saturday morning, looking for a "Rainbow in the Sky" installation (http://www.armoryarts.org/current-one.php). When we finally found it, it didn't look anything like in the pictures. The area is fairly small and the installation not very impressive. But we enjoyed the stroll through the Old Town, and I discovered a Patagonia store with summer sale.
From Pasadena we took Hiqhway 2, Angelest Crest Hwy, across the Angeles Mountains. It was quite an interesting drive, the scenery is very quickly very different from the LA area bellow. It also happened to be the location of the huge Station Fire few days later. The mountains are very dry and one wonders why would anyone want to build a house in a place like that, but I guess all the better places have been taken...
We descended on the other side of the mountains near a not so charming community of Phelan. Though hungry, I didn't want to eat in a place that unwelcoming and decided to wait. Finally we left the subdivisions behind and were in the good old Eastern Sierra country, passing through ghost towns of Atolia and Randsburg with fascinating history of tungsten mining.Now starving, we finally stopped in a little town of Inyokern, with no fast food in sight. Larry somewhat doubtfully followed me inside the only restaurant, little Mexican place named Bernardinos. It turned out to be great and we loved it. We would plan to stop there the next time we are passing through (like going to explore Atolia some more).
Just past Bishop the rain started, very unusual for this time a year. We checked in a motel in Mammoth and walked across the street to have pizza and mostly the great beer I remembered from few years back. Pizza was so so, but they didn't carry the Pilsner any more, and what they had was flat and overall awful. It will be the brewery the next time we are in town.
To our astonishment we woke up to a gray rainy morning. At least we didn't miss much not being up for sunrise at Mono Lake. We stopped for breakfast at Whoa Nellie Delli in Lee Vining, sharing the place with bunch of wet bikers. Since we drove a car, the rain was actually sort of cool, and we decided to drive over Sonora Pass instead of taking 120. It was a new route for both of us, and it was quite scenic and enjoyable. Once we crossed the mountains, the sky cleared up, and I even got a flat of strawberries at my favorite fruit stand in Manteca.
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